Page:Lives of the apostles of Jesus Christ (1836).djvu/230

 considerate disposition to accord the sanction of his absolute secular power to their religious sentence. Expectation stood on tiptoe for the comfortable spectacle of the streaming life-blood of this stubborn leader of the Nazarene heresy, and nothing was wanting to the completion of the ceremony, but the criminal himself. That "desideratum, so much to be desired," was, however, not so easily supplied; for the entrance of the delinquent sentinels now presented the non-est-inventus return to the solemn summons for the body of their prisoner. Confusion thrice confounded now fell on the faces that were just shining with anticipated triumph over their hated foe, while secret, scornful joy illuminated the countenances of the oppressed friends of Jesus. But on the devoted minions of the baffled king, did his disappointed vengeance fall most cruelly; in his paroxysm of vexation, and for an event wholly beyond their control they now suffered an undeserved death; making so tragical a catastrophe to a story otherwise decidedly comical, that the reader can only comfort himself with the belief that they were a set of insolent reprobates who had insulted the distresses of their frequent victims, and would have rejoiced in the bloody execution of the apostle.

King Herod Agrippa, after this miserable failure in his attempt to "please the Jews," does not seem to have made a very long stay in Jerusalem. Before his departure, however, to secure his own solid glory and his kingdom's safety, as well as the favor of his subjects, he not only continued the repairs of the temple, but instituted such improvements in the fortifications of the city, as, if ever completed, would have made it utterly impregnable even to a Roman force; so that the emperor's jealousy soon compelled him to abandon this work; and soon after he left Jerusalem, and went down to Caesarea Augusta, on the sea-coast, long the seat of government of Palestine, and a more agreeable place for the operations of a Gentile court and administration, (for such Agrippa's must have been from his Roman residence,) than the punctilious religious capital of Judea. But he was not allowed to remain much longer on the earth, to hinder the progress of the truth, by acts of tyranny in subservience to the base purposes of winning the favor of his more powerful subjects. The hand of God was laid destroyingly on him, in the midst of what seemed the full fruition of that popular adulation for which he had lived,—in which he now died. Arrayed in a splendid and massy robe of polished silver, he seated himself on the throne erected by his